Playing to Win

[Now Experiencing] [Non-Fiction] [Game Design]

I just received David Sirlin's book Playing To Win in the mail. Which came as something of a surprise to me. I ordered it about four months ago, and had kind of assumed something went wrong and it wasn't being sent. In the abstract, I remembered I'd ordered a book about game theory - it's just that my memory had forgotten Sirlin and helpfully assumed that it must have been Raph Koster's book that I'd asked for.

Well, I have it now, which I'm very pleased about as Sirlin is an insightful and very readable writer. I'm looking forward to getting stuck into it, horrible eye-searing cover design and all. Also, this leaves me free to place my order for Raph's book.

For the confused, this is NOT in fact the motivational or sports-themed book that it appears to be, but is rather an expounding of Sirlin's excellent articles on gameplaying philosophy and game theory from his self-titled website. In particular, it develops what may be, among hardcore gamers, the most widely-referenced single blog post of all time. I'm going to wave this in Matt's face and make him understand why he should stop complaining that my Soulcalibur III tactics are cheap and just learn to beat them, dammit.